Valentime's Day...

Unless you hate television and the red eye and the city's most romantic restaurant polls, no doubt that you knew this past weekend was Valentine's Day - normally an opportunity for drunk twenty-five year olds to hop on a trolley for the Screw Cupid pub crawl. You know who you are...

But for H and I its our one and only Valentines day as an engaged couple - which makes it special for us. I have said this before, I am not that into Holidays - especially non-holidays, and least of all manufactured holidays, that are not really holidays (PTL I don't have a secretary). I sound like my Dad. With Labor day and the like, I can at least get into it, knowing that there is a day off involved. Valentine's day has never been a favorite of mine - it might not even make the top ten holidays in my book. Up until meeting H (and before TiVo), the constant advertisements and love-hocking, kind of created a sense of guilt for being single. I combated this manufactured lonliness with lots of whiskey (not so important side note - I think I purposely set Valentine's day as the end date for one of my greatest benders - a girl and I broke up in January, 2002. I gave myself 30 days to get over it. Each day involved drinking. My good friend from law school called this the "best time of his life" - as he had a drinking buddy for an entire month straight. Needless to say "A Walk to Remember" with Shane West (I heart Shane West) was probably the best movie I saw that year(also, probably my nadir). By Valentine's Day, I no longer missed the girl, but, on the 15th of February, I kind of missed the drinking. Thats what a $120K private law school education gets you. Catharsis!!)

I digress...

Last year, H and I decided to ease up on the gift giving on Valentines Day (my main concern is that we set the bar pretty high the first year - complete with Justin Timberlake tickets), so we kind of put a price limit on it and then would split dinner. It worked pretty well and so, we determined to do the same this year. Naturally, we worked the wedding into the gift giving - and decided that we would buy each other vow journals in anticipation of writing our own vows. She was pretty easy - especially since she picked one out to get her. In turn, I received the exact vow journal I would pick out - simple, masculine and with lined pages, since blank pages freak me out. Well done sweetheart!

For dinner we decided on Powerhouse - which in 2007 was voted as one of the best new restuarants in the city. Again, this was in 2007. How the mighty have fallen. I have vacillated between not commenting on the restaurant and/or completely slagging Powerhouse. I am not the bigger man. What a nasty, horrible dining 'experience.' It wasn't the food (though H's whitefish wasn't "all the way" de-boned). The food was good enough. It was the complete and utter lack of service. Starting with the host (who was not at her stand - and would not be for another 5 minutes after we (and two other couples) arrived) through the bus staff (which there was none). Now, I get it - I am not one to really get critical of wait staff - I always tip no questions asked - but this was ridiculous. There was literally a pall over the entire restaurant. It was a shared experience amongst the diners. Everyone was annoyed - which, waiting 20 minutes for a drink list and some bread will do to you. After the comedy of the entire 'experience' set in, I finally relaxed and we enjoyed a nice, quiet time (aside from some woman's smoker's hack), which turned out to kind of highlight why H and I work so well - she definitely balanced me out that night and we took what could have been a disasterous night and made it fun, and even a little romantic, despite the circumstances -

Plus, we got to gorge ourselves on their free dessert. Which was nice.